Calendar of saints (Episcopal Church)

The veneration of saints in the Episcopal Church is a continuation of an ancient tradition from the early Church which honors important people of the Christian faith. The usage of the term "saint" is similar to Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Those in the Anglo-Catholic tradition may explicitly invoke saints as intercessors in prayer. The saints are also recognized as examples in history of good Christian men and women.

The Episcopal Church publishes Lesser Feasts and Fasts, which contains feast days for the various men and women the Church wishes to honor. This book is updated every three years and notable persons are added to the liturgical calendar.

This is the calendar of saints and blessed found in the Book of Common Prayer and Lesser Feasts and Fasts; the relevant official resources of the Episcopal Church. This list reflects changes made at the 2009 General Convention. It lists provisional changes made in the new official list of feasts, Holy Women, Holy Men.[1]

There is no single calendar for the various churches making up the Anglican Communion; each makes its own calendar suitable for its local situation. As a result, the calendar here contains a number of figures important in the history of the church in the United States. Calendars in different provinces will focus on figures more important to those different countries. At the same time, different provinces often borrow important figures from each other's calendars as the international importance of different figures becomes clear. In this way the calendar of the Episcopal Church has importance beyond the immediate purpose of supporting the liturgy of the Episcopal Church. It is, for example, one of the key sources of the calendar for the international daily office Oremus.[2]

The Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church identifies four categories of feasts: Principal Feasts, other Feasts of our Lord (including Sundays), other Major Feasts, and minor feasts. Two major fast days are also listed (Ash Wednesday and Good Friday). In addition to these categories, further distinctions are made between feasts, to determine the precedence of feasts used when more than one feast falls on the same day. In addition, Lesser Feasts and Fasts gives further rules for the relative ranking of feasts and fasts. These rules of precedence all establish a ranking, from most to least important, as follows:

Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are appointed as fast days. Lesser fast days, called "days of special observance", are all the weekdays of Lent and every Friday in the year, with the exception that fasting is never observed during the Easter or Christmas seasons, or on Feasts of our Lord. The Episcopal Church does not prescribe the specific manner of observance of these days.